


Old World Blues, New World Blues

by LadyDovah



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Alternate Universe: Canon Divergence, Drug Use, F/F, F/M, Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Librarians, Libraries, Minor Character Death, Nuclear Warfare, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Panic Attacks, Post-Nuclear War, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide, drug overdose
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-08
Updated: 2018-06-08
Packaged: 2019-05-19 13:00:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14874210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyDovah/pseuds/LadyDovah
Summary: A young archivist rides out the Great War in a bunker with 26 other people. 200 years later, she's a ghoul, a data hoarder, information broker, and historian. She meets the Sole Survivor, and eventually falls in love with him. This is how she gets there, and what comes after.





	Old World Blues, New World Blues

**Author's Note:**

> I've posted this before, but it was in first person and I wasn't that good a writer then, so I took it down. 
> 
> This story starts a few minutes before the war, and ends long after. This will be a graphic and disturbing story, so don't read this if that sort of thing bothers you.

Paige was wary of new people. After her mother made her take a job at the Boston Public Library, it took her weeks to really open up to anyone. She could work just fine, but was nearly incapable of carrying on a conversation for more then ten minutes. Eventually she was assigned to the archives, where she immediately began to thrive. After a few months, the archives were in better shape then they had ever been, and Paige had finally opened up to most of her coworkers. The head custodian, Winnie, was the first to create a crack in her shell.

Winnie had worked at the library for eleven years, and she was very protective of her friends. The people who worked at the library were her family, and she welcomed Paige with open arms, and once she learned how to accept affection from people who weren’t family, Paige accepted Winnie as a second mother.

Ida, one of the women who worked the front desk, was absolutely ruthless in her attempts at getting Paige to interact with for more than five minutes. But somehow she knew when to back off, so it didn’t take her long to gain Paige’s trust.

Ruby was gentle. She was careful not to startle Paige, treating her a bit like a skittish cat. Despite being three years younger than Paige, Ruby had more life experience than both of them put together. She came from a reasonably wealthy family, but she was unlike them in every way, the most obvious one being that she preferred women over men. She came out to her parents on her sixteenth birthday. They disowned her a week later, and she spent the next four years finding her place in the world. That place turned out to be at the library, where she re-shelved books and sometimes worked the front desk, and with her girlfriend Jean, a Lieutenant in the Army, currently deployed in Alaska. Ruby’s friendship with Paige was tentative at first, and she spent a month simply hanging around the Archives while she got used to her. Paige trusted Ruby more than she trusted anyone else, and she would often go to her for advice.

Jefferson was the one who had the hardest time getting Paige to talk to him. He was a veteran of Anchorage who had been discharged after losing his left leg. Being a former soldier, he was usually pretty crass, and had stayed pretty burly after leaving the army. That, and he was six foot two and very attractive, making him a perfect storm for Paige’s anxiety. It took him almost six weeks to get her to say more than a handful of sentences to or around him, but he eventually became the older brother she never had.

One by one, Paige conquered her fear of her colleagues, until she could interact comfortably with whomever she pleased. After a year or so, she got better about interacting with strangers, and was able to function (socially, that is,) in a healthy way.

That left only one fear: nuclear apocalypse.

 

                                                                                                     [===•===]

 

It’s always scared her. With the fear of total annihilation looming behind her all her life, it would have been impossible for her not to have been afraid. When she was fourteen, her mother told her about living through the initial invasion of Alaska by China, and how everyone was sure the US would retaliate with nuclear weapons. She still has nightmares, especially now that an apocalypse seems to grow more likely every day.

The bunker helps. It was the library’s janitors who first approached the workers in the subway across the street. Seeing as most of the people who worked at the Library commuted via subway, it was inevitable that they would develop some kind of friendship with it’s workers. The subway itself was a decent protector from bombs and fallout, but this particular station had something most others didn’t: a large, mostly empty storage area. After clearing it out and checking it’s foundations, the storage rooms slowly became one fairly large bunker. The librarians, the janitors, and the subway workers pooled their resources, and managed to get enough money to reinforce and shield the walls of the shelter. The Head Librarian had a lot of money, and used most of it to install vents, water sources, a few rudimentary toilets, and to buy a broken Assaultron that Jefferson spent two years fixing.

Winnie managed to enough food and water to last a year, along with a disturbingly large amount of medical supplies.

Ida somehow acquired ten boxes of Med-X, along with a few boxes of stimpacks, that no one was willing to question her about.

Jean sent most of her Lieutenant’s paycheck home to Ruby, who spent half of it on construction material, with a focus on insulation.

Paige -and the Head Librarian- insisted that they store the older and more important books in the shelter, along with copies of the less important ones.

Jefferson was the one who bought the guns. Several of his old army buddies became weapon dealers after they came home, and he helped Winnie convince everyone else that they would need to have something aside from the Assaultron to protect them once they left the bunker.

An old, lead-lined door from a bank vault tied it all together. If the end ever came, they would hopefully be just as safe in their bunker as they would be in a Vault.

They hoped to god they’d never need it.

                                                                                                    [===•===]

 

They weren’t that lucky. The morning of October twenty-third was a quiet one. The Library’s staff came in early, as usual, to get it ready for the day’s patrons. As it was a Saturday, there were more people in than there would be on a week-day. To keep the staff from getting overwhelmed, as it was a rather large library, they let highschoolers volunteer on the weekends, so this morning there were five extra people working.

They sat in the break-room slash kitchen eating breakfast, drinking coffee, and argued over who would have re-shelving duty while Paige sat near the water cooler with Jefferson, debating whether or not modern-day robots are sentient, and what that means.

“If it has feelings, it’s sentient. Roarke freaked out the other day when you dropped that box. Her fans were whirring so loud it was like she was hyperventilating,” says Paige.

“I think she was having a flashback,” Jefferson answers. “If she can have an emotional reaction that strong, then she’s definitely a person. But what does that mean?”

“It means we need to treat her like a person. We need to let her make her own decisions,” Paige replys.

“Unless it involves leaving the Library. You know what the cops’ll do if they find her,” Jefferson states.

Paige shakes her head. “They won’t. They aren’t paranoid enough to raid their own libraries.”

“Sure, but what if-”

“Everybody shut up !” Winnie hollered suddenly. Paige turns just in time to see her crank up the radio.

“-ad news. This just came through,” the voice pauses, then takes a shuddering breath, “At least fifty ICBMs are inbound to the US. Detonations have already been reported in New York, Pennsylvania, and Washington DC. We are being told that anyone able to hear this has ten minutes to take shelter. If you have a place in a Vault, now’s the time to go. If you don’t, find a Pulowski, or go to a shelter or anywhere underground. Subway, cellar, basement, sewer, it doesn’t matter, just get underground. If you can’t get to any of those, go or stay home and find a windowless room. Good luck, and god help us all.”

The voice cuts out, and is replaced by an emergency broadcast just as the Library’s alarms start going off.

“Alright everybody, let’s go! Get to the bunker now,” Winnie yells, and the cold feeling of pure fear sinks into Paige’s bones. She freezes, and suddenly everything sounds distorted, like she’s underwater. Blackness pours in from the edge of her vision, and she tries to tell someone- “Hey-” but she’s falling, and the last thing she feels before she faints is Jefferson catching and then lifting her into his arms.

The next few minutes pass in fragments.

They walk through the front doors just as Paige regains consciousness, and the sudden surge of light and noise makes her close her eyes.

They're in the streets, being jostled as they fight through the panicked throng of people.

They're descending. Darkness finally returns, and she remembers no more.

 

                                                                                                     [===•===]

 

Everything snaps back into clarity just as Jefferson sets her down in the corner of the bunker’s first room. She feels the cold cement on her arms and legs, and she turns and lays against the wall, the cold seeping into her cheek. She looks over to the door, and sees Winnie ordering people around.

“Ida, Jefferson, get that door closed. You three,” she says, pointing to Ruby and two of the interns. ”Go and get as many blankets as you can carry. Cyrus, go find Roarke and bring her in here, she’s must be panicking.” She continues on like this, but Paige stops paying attention once Cyrus gets back with Roarke.

Sure enough, she’s freaking out. Paige can hear the whirring already. Cyrus tells her to go sit down somewhere, and she stops and scans the room for a moment before she sees Paige. She walks over to her before leaning against the wall and letting herself slide down it onto the floor.

There’s a soft pink glow in her eyes that frightens Paige almost more than the bombs, but it’s gone before she can say anything. Someone tosses a few blankets at them, and Paige throws two of them over Roarke, then shifts to closer her before wrapping herself in the other one. She grabs her arm, and presses her body against Roarke’s, now cushioned by the blankets.

“It’s alright,” Paige says. “It’ll be over soon.” She tries to soothe her, but she can’t ignore the quiver in her voice. The whirring quiets a bit, but doesn’t stop.

“What will happen to us?” Roarke asks, her normally smooth voice shaky and broken.

“I don’t know,” Paige answers. “I don’t know.” She wishes she could offer comforting words, but the sick feeling of fear in her stomach has taken away her ability to think straight.

A few minutes later, Winnie comes over and sits down next to Paige, a pile of blankets in her arms. She spreads them out over them, and then practically pulls Paige into her lap, wrapping her arms around her. Paige takes a shuddering breath.

“You’re okay,” Winnie says, “You’re safe. We’re all gonna be fine.” Paige doesn’t answer, instead opting to lay her head on Winnie’s shoulder, and look around.

Everyone is covered in blankets. Some people are openly crying, others just look scared. A few seem to have gone numb.

Ruby is sitting next to Jefferson, sobbing into his shoulder as he rubs her back. For his part, he seems calm, but Paige knows he’s just as scared as the rest of them. The teenage volunteers are huddled together in a cluster, and one of them seems completely catatonic. Cyrus is watching the door, hardly blinking as he sits in the corner opposite Paige, a look of anger on his face.

A few tense minutes pass before there’s a loud boom, so loud it sounds like someone has fired a gun in the room with them. Paige whimpers, but she can’t feel fear anymore. She can’t accept that this happening. Then everything starts to shake, and it feels like the whole world is coming apart above them. Plaster from the ceiling starts to rain down on them, and Winnie pulls the blankets over their heads as she pushes Paige to the ground, making her lay flat on the floor. Every few minutes something slams into the ground above, and she can only assume it’s the city falling apart.

Hours later, the shaking and crashing finally stops, and Paige slowly raises up, pulling off the blankets. Around her, everyone else is doing the same. She scans the room, making sure everybody’s still alive. Ruby has stopped crying, but now seems completely numb. Jefferson stands up, and starts checking people for injuries.

Winnie gets up too, and begins to take control of the situation once more “Alright, everybody, I know you’re scared, but we have make sure this place is intact. Cyrus, I want you to check for structural damage. Ida, go check our supplies. Paige, honey, are you okay enough to help?” she says

“Yes,” answers Paige. “What do you need me to do?”

“Go find some brooms and dustpan, we need to sweep up all this plaster if we want to live semi-comfortably.” Paige nods, and then heads deeper into the bunker.

Eventually she finds herself standing in the doorway of the storage closet, and steps inside. She closes the door behind her, pawing at the wall for the light switch. She flips it on, but instead looking for mops, she goes to the end an aisle, and sits down at the end of it. She pulls her knees up to her chest and wraps her arms around them. Staring at the radiation suits on the rack in front of her, she sighs shakily.

What are they going to do now? It's over. The end of the world has come and gone, and now all they can do is wait for the radiation to pass. They're stuck down here. She wonders if the library has been destroyed. She wonders if _Boston_ has been destroyed. What is it like up there now? Is anyone alive? Is anything alive? Even if they are, Paige knows what comes after the bombs: fallout, with black rain and nuclear winter.

She's glad for their near glut of supplies, especially with the few extra people they picked up before pushing shut the bunker door. She's fairly certain they didn't have a child with them when they left the library.

 

                                                                                                    [===•===]

 

Vera. The young girl's name is Vera. She is barely fourteen, so not much of a child, though Paige supposes she can't be blamed; the girl is small for her age. She has cried nearly non-stop since the ground stopped shaking.

Paige feels so bad for her.

Once she had calmed, Paige had asked Winnie where Vera came from. Apparently, just as they were turning down the hall to the bunker, a woman grabbed Ruby's hand, and started begging her to take her daughter. She could tell they were going somewhere, and knew it was probably a shelter. Winnie said they couldn't take anymore, they had already taken a few people. But the woman begged, saying she would stay behind, try to keep others from finding them before they could get to the bunker, but only if they took her child. They agreed, and the woman kissed her daughter on the forehead before hugging her tightly, then stepping back.

"Take her. Vera, I love you so much! Be good!" She had said, tears streaming down her face.

"I love you too, Mom!" The girl answered automatically. "Please come with me!"

"I can't baby, I'm so sorry," she sobbed. She turned to Winnie. "Just take her, _please_!" Winnie nodded, and grabbed Cyrus' shoulder.

"Cyrus, take her and _run_!" Cyrus gave a solemn nod, and leaned down to look the child in the face.

"I'm sorry." He picked her up, and ran to the bunker, the poor girl screaming for her mother the whole way. The woman walked back out of the hallway, and looked back at them before turning the corner: "Thank you!" And she was gone.

The other four people that joined them was a small group of misfit teenagers that just happened to be talking with the subway workers when the alarms went off. Two girls, two boys, none older than eighteen. Paige truly felt awful for them.

They were all so young, all torn from their families. At least the misfits have each other. Poor Vera has no one.

Paige's family lives up in Maine, on the coast. Maine doesn't have many large population centers, so maybe they survived? She knows her uncle had a large bunker built for their family, but had everyone managed to get there in time? Her family celebrated every holiday in some way, Halloween being one they participated in with particular enthusiasm, and seeing as their family tended to gather for most of them, maybe…

No, she shouldn't think about it now. Jefferson says you shouldn't stress yourself about things you cannot change.

Besides… all she has is her friends, now.

 

                                                                                                [===•===]

 

Night falls, and Paige dreams.

She dreams of a great cloud, a mushroom made of fire, and a flattened wasteland. She dreams of a shock-wave, bowling over everything in it's path.

She's walking through the city, and it's not flattened, it's just broken and filthy, and she sees that cloud hanging in the sky. Shadows scar the streets, the black figures varying wildly. Some are simple: a lamp here, a mailbox there. Others are more complicated: the shape of a crouching being; it could be human, it could be animal. A carriage.. Some, though, are unmistakable. A human shielding their face. Two people, holding each other, evident only by their legs. Whole groups of people.

In her dream, tears are streaming down her face. To hey run down her arms, and she is grateful for the sleight coolness they bring, but why are they... No, that is not only tears, that is rain! She looks up, and she sees the black water begin to drip from the sky. It stains everything it touches, turning the world around her dark.

It pours, and she drowns in it.

 

                                                                                                [===•===]

 

She wakes up gasping, but the screams she hears take her breath away, and her heart sinks into her stomach.

Every light in the bunker is on. Paige had fallen asleep in the living area, and now she hears screaming coming from the women's bunks. Roarke is standing guard beside her, whirring anxiously.

"Roarke? What's going on?" Paige asks, bleary but frightened.

"I don't know," answers Roarke. "Someone turned on the lights, and then started screaming. Miss Winnie was in the foyer, and when this madness started she ran in there, but she hasn't been able to quiet them!" She says, static lacing her voice in an oddly panicked way.

"Alright, stop, everybody stop screaming!" Jefferson bellows, and his voice reverberates painfully in the bunker. Paige covers her ears.

"What happened?" he asks in the silence that follows. Paige stands and walks closer to the room, ignoring Roarke's protests.

"I don't… I- I woke up, and went to use the bathroom, and when passed her bed, I realized she wasn't *m-moving*! I don't know what happened, she was fine when I went sleep," Ida says. "I don't understand. What h-happened to her? She was f-fine," she sobs.

"I think I know," answers Cyrus. "Look," he says, pointing to where her bed meets the wall.

There, Paige sees a pill bottle, open, it's lid nowhere to be seen. A small bottle of water lies next to it.

She killed herself.

 

                                                                                                  [===•===]

 

Her name was Petra. She was only sixteen. No one knew her very well; She was just an innocent, trapped in a structure with twenty other people, without the fortitude to go on.

They drop her body, wrapped in sheets, down one of the tunnel hatches. They say a few words, though they are more about why this happened, than who it happened to.

Paige is lost. She doesn’t know what to feel. The world ended yesterday, and tonight a teenage girl committed suicide. Was she right to do so? Is there really any hope for them, after they leave the bunker? What are they going to do in the meantime?

 _It doesn’t matter_ , she thinks. _You’ll keep going, with everyone else. This can’t be the end._

And so begins the next six months of her life.

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first actual fic, so let me know what you think.


End file.
